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Cochem

Monday, May 1, 2017

I was sitting alone on a train, when suddenly a question came in mind.

What am I doing here? What's the point?

That was my 4th out of 5 train journey that day. I took the train first from Wageningen in Netherland, because I spent a night at a friend's place who are studying there in Wageningen University, to Nijmegen (which is also in Netherland). From Nijmegen, I changed to another train and stopped at Venlo (the city near the border of Netherland and Germany). From Venlo, I boarded the train that brought me to Dusseldorf in Germany. There I took the train to Koblenz, and from Koblenz I took the final train which would lead me to my last destination : Cochem.

"What? Cochem? Are you sure it's in Germany?" - said Max, my German flat-mate when I told him that I'm going to Germany on Easter Break, "come on, go visit Berlin, Frankfurt, or any other real cities."

"Yeah I know Cochem, I went there on my high-school trip, but what are you going to do there?", added Stefan, who is also German, "like, are you sure they even have a train station there?"

"Are you going to Cochem? Great! You'll love it!", said Corinna, the only German's friend who were on my side.

Okay, so I'm going on a vacation, after a rough semester that had just passed, I think I deserve a break. I answered my own question.

Yeah I do deserve it, but why Cochem out of all other beautiful cities and countries?

I first knew that there is a beautiful city called Cochem from Niken's blog. I call it a love at the very first sight; a small city, cute old houses, a river, and a castle (not to mention it is located on a top of a hill). It looked like the setting from Ghibli's movies. Well, I realized that sometimes pictures lies. That sometimes the reality is not as good as what it looks like in the picture. Nevertheless, I took a mental note that I should visit it someday.

I remembered Max warned me about Germany and their 'usually delayed' train system, which made me planned my train journey a little bit more careful. I chose the longer transit time, just in case something happened. I thanked him for that, because I arrived at Koblenz 10 minutes late than the scheduled time because my train was delayed. So, I had to rush proceeding to other platform knowing that my next train already waited for me. I only had 2 minutes to change platform which pushed me to increase the speed of my running into sprint, and just a second after I board the train, the door was closed behind me. Such a glorious moment. If I were in a movie, there will be We Are the Champion song played in the background.

Finally, the last train!

The train passed along the river Rhine. Quite a picturesque view, too bad I was sitting on the opposite side so I wasn't able to capture it with my camera. I wondered what it's like to live there, in a little white house just by the river, with the hills behind.

Cochem station, yeah, they do exist.

I finally arrived at Cochem near 3 PM in the afternoon. The blue skies and warm weather greeted me, encouraged me to took off my coat. Perfect, I thought. I noticed that Cochem indeed is a very small town. I walked from station to a guest house that I already pre-booked before. I saw old medieval buildings, the river Rhine, a glimpse of that castle on a hill from the distance, and small alleys. There were not so many tourist around, they were mostly the old couples and solo-travelers. As the older I gets, I always feel tired easily whenever I'm surrounded by crowds. At that moment, I knew that I would love this city wholeheartedly.

The thing was, since Cochem is a small town and apparently not a very popular destination among young people, I couldn't find any dorm-style hostel there. Therefore, I should book private room that costed me more. Funny because I found the room and the whole guest house was so fancy (even though that was the cheapest one in the entire town), not an usual view for me. I even had my own bathroom, with fancy towels, hairdryers, and all. So happy! I found the owner was really nice as well. He let me put my things on the last day after I checked out until almost midnight and gave me a cup of hot tea for free because he saw me freezing.

"Whoa, you have a small bag", wondered the owner of the guest house

Hello, fancy bathroom!

Free buffet breakfast. Such a rare occasion!

So I spent my two days in Cochem reading Jhumpa Lahiri's book, sitting by the river (I spent hours and hours there) and trying to draw the landscape in my journal (turned out to be a crap, obviously), getting a nice sun, wandering around town, capturing lots of pictures. I was drowned in its serenity and peacefulness.

Morning view

Relationship goals. After the couple left that bench, I sat there for hours.